Presenter:

James D. Sutton, EdD
P.O. Box 672
Pleasanton, TX 78064
(800) 659-6628

www.docspeak.com
Email: suttonjd@docspeak.com

Program Focus:

This program will focus on the cause and scope of persistent impulsive and aggressive behavior, and it will offer practical, doable ideas and strategies for effective intervention and management.

Participant Benefits:

This workshop will improve participants' ability to:

Intended Audience of this Program:

This program is designed to assist educators, administrators, counselors, practitioners, clinicians and allied health service professionals in working more effectively with the emotionally fragile youngster who easily is given to episodes of impulsivity and overly aggressive behavior.

Needs Addressed by this Program:

Why is it that some youngsters can recite the behavior rules and consequences chapter and verse ... yet still violate those rules over and over again?

Why is it that it takes only one "cocked to explode" youngster to damage the learning environment for everyone?

Why is it our best strategies for managing the volatile, impulsive and aggressive youngster often don't work ... or seem only to make things worse?

These are not easy questions to answer. It's tough enough for anyone, but it's especially difficult for a child to control behavior that is slipping out of control.

Program Description:

There's nothing new about the need for anger management with this youngster. What is new is information affecting the way we look at the issue of problematic anger and how we manage it.

We know, for instance, that aggressive behavior is primarily learned behavior and that, regardless of how it looks from the outside, the aggressive child feels like a victim. This affects how the child thinks, or, in some instances, doesn't think. The highly impulsive youngster and the highly creative youngster are alike in one sense; they operate more out of "images" than traditional language. The problem is that the images of the impulsive and aggressive youngster are not pretty ones. Their behaviors follow the images.

We know also that an angry and acting out youngster is strictly in a survival mode, a state of self maintenance that is not at all open to reason and logic. This is precisely where many interventions fail.

The slowing down of impulsive thought and the damage it can create involves a re-perception of immediate safety, a capacity to self-soothe, increased facility with language, and the formation of positive images. The goal is for the child, with assistance, to rid themselves of victim status, to gain familiarity with their own needs and feelings, to improve beliefs, and to evaluate their own progress accurately. This program will not only address the development and improvement of these skills, it will give participants step-by-step content and activities for doing so.

Program Objectives:

Through this workshop and materials, participants will be able to:

1. Consider why what is "logical" about behavior is not at all logical to this child.

2. Investigate the perceptions of "winning" and "losing" as they so dramatically affect the angry and impulsive youngster.

3. Internalize the two factors that researchers agree most influence impulsive and aggressive behavior.

4. Address why the angry child looks like an abuser, but feels like a victim.

5. Grasp the concept of Emotional Bandwidth as it accounts for "normal" and problematic psycho-emotional functioning.

6. Understand  how rage, like creativity, operates primarily on images (Image Streaming), not language.

7. Gain insight into "desperate behavior" and why it is so difficult to manage.

8. Know the three components to a "pattern" of behavior that, when altered, often can eliminate undesirable behaviors immediately.

9. Learn how language can be used to "slow down" and even contain the rage response.

10. Teach a youngster the powerful connection between Needs, Feelings, Beliefs and Freedoms, and how to use them to achieve healing and improved behavioral control.

11. Implement a detailed, step-by-step process for teaching a child the insights and skills of anger management and interpersonal empowerment.

12. Share the value and skills of noncoercive response to irritating circumstances.

13. Employ an intervention that shows the child how to "manipulate" negative images using visualization and metaphor.

14. Consider other modalities for helping a youngster gain control over anger and destructive impulse.

Qualifications of the Presenter:

James D. Sutton, EdD

Texas Psychologist License # 2790
 

Texas Professional Counselor License # 06979
 

Texas Education Agency certifications--see vita
 

Texas Licensed Specialist in School Psychology #6154

Certified Speaking Professional

Agenda: (5.5 hour format, leading to 5.5 contact hours or .55 CEU credits)